Dennis the Zionist Menace

Dennis Ross, you may remember, was Bill Clinton's Middle East 'peace' envoy. Mearsheimer and Walt see him as an integral of Israel's lobby in the United States, noting that, although Ross has "occasionally criticized specific Israeli actions," he "believes that the United States should give Israel substantial diplomatic, economic, and military support even when Israel takes actions the United States opposes" and that he "has devoted a significant amount of his professional life to encouraging this sort of support." (The Israel Lobby & US Foreign Policy, 2007, p 114)

Little wonder then at the Israel first content of his near 2-page spread in Saturday's Australian. Some gems - rebutted:

"The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is essentially one of two national movements competing for the same space."

No it isn't. The 'conflict' is essentially one of an indigenous people, denied self-determination in its ancestral home by the British, then set upon, driven out, or otherwise occupied, by a European settler-colonial movement - Zionism - introduced and fostered by the British." (Give them hope & peace, 19/5/18)

"In my talk [in 2005 to a few hundred Palestinians in Gaza before the Israeli withdrawal], I said that Palestinians had never been able to control their own destiny - the Arabs determined what would be done in 1948."

What rubbish! A US-manipulated UNGA set the scene in 1947 by disregarding the right of the Palestinians to determine the fate of their country and partitioning it into a Jewish and an Arab states. This, of course, gave the Zionist forces in Palestine the pretext they needed to overrun as much of Palestine as they could, and drive out as many Palestinians as they could, without any regard whatever for the borders laid down by the UN partition plan.

"Hamas said the protests would be peaceful even as it called them Demonstrations for Return - return to Palestinian homes in Israel."

To begin with, Hamas didn't organise the protests. And there is here the incredible suggestion that merely calling for the right of the Palestinians to return to the homes and lands stolen from them by Israel in 1948, and mobilising protests in support of that right, is enough to render those protests not peaceful.

"But, of course, those being mobilised don't have homes to go back to in Israel... "

And why is that Mr Ross?

"... and Israel is not the country it was in 1948."

Well, ain't that a COMPELLING reason for the Palestinians to kept in their Gaza Ghetto box?

"Hamas's leaders [want] to stigmatise Israel before the world as a way of also weakening Israel's ability to engage in self-defense and discredit it internationally."

So let me get this straight. Gunning down defenceless Palestinian protesters (we won't even mention journalists) with sniper rifles is self defence. And it's the protesters, not Israel's own actions, who are discrediting Israel. Right...

Ross pees on us but would have us think it's raining.